


The Wallet

by LeDiz



Series: The 48: Pokemon [1]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Loneliness, XY series, there was a long line of friends before them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-07-29 22:00:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7701307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeDiz/pseuds/LeDiz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ash has been on the road a long time, and he's made a lot of friends. Serena and Clemont start to realise just what that means for them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wallet

“You two don’t have any siblings, do you?”

They were in the middle of nowhere, walking a little slower than normal since Bonnie was happily dancing, swinging Puny around over her head, rather than walk properly. But she was so thrilled that none of them had it in them to stop her.

“No, though the rhyhorn sure felt like family!” Serena said happily, and Ash chuckled. She grinned at him. “You don’t either, right?”

“Nah. But I had Brock for a while; he felt a lot like a big brother.”

“Brock?” they repeated, and he blinked at them before grinning.

“No way! I haven’t told you about Brock?” he asked, and stopped walking, swinging his pack off his shoulder and kneeling down in a single movement. Although it had been dancing with Bonnie, Pikachu noticed them stopping and ran over, chirruping interest as Ash pulled out a wallet. It jumped up onto his head as he stood up again and held the wallet out. “Here… this is Brock. He’s training to become a Pokemon Doctor, but he used to be a Breeder and a Gym Leader.”

The wallet turned out to be a kind of photo album, with small pictures of several groups of people, though Ash held it so that it only showed a single photo – one with him, Pikachu, a beautiful girl with black hair, a small penguin-pokemon, and a taller young man a warm smile and narrow eyes. “Brock travelled with me for years. He's the best cook, and really smart. You’d really like him.”

Clemont tried to push down an irrational spike of jealousy, while Serena smiled awkwardly and pointed at the girl. “And this…?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, that’s Dawn and Piplup. They travelled with us through Sinnoh. Dawn’s a coordinator – they’re all about beautiful battling, rather than power or speed,” he said.

“Can I see the other photos?” Clemont asked, and Ash shrugged, handing it over. Serena ducked around to walk beside Clemont, and together they flicked to the end. Clemont refused to admit he was checking out his latest competition, but still jerked when he found himself looking at what was definitely a very young Ash. Only then did he remember Ash was from Kanto and they read books back to front. Probably not the end, then.

“Wait, I know this kid,” Serena said, and Clemont blinked, then looked at the picture again. Young Ash had his arm around an equally young boy with spiky brown hair. “He was at the Pokemon Camp too.”

Ash glanced over, then grinned. “Gary. He was my best friend growing up. He’s a Pokemon Researcher now.”

“Pi pikachu,” Pikachu said, and Ash laughed at its unimpressed tone.

“But he used to be a trainer like me. We were rivals at the start of our journeys – he really hated me.”

“What?” Clemont asked, shocked at the idea of anyone being able to hate Ash. “Really? Why? How?”

“But you said you were best friends,” Serena added, and Ash tilted his head, considering.

“We had this big fight. It was kinda stupid, and I don’t think the fight was actually the reason we stopped being friends, but we’ve never really talked about it,” he said, and then grinned again, a little shamefully. “Can’t say I blame him though. I was an annoying kid, and a lousy trainer.”

That made them both stare. “A lousy trainer?”

“Yup. Pikachu worked pretty hard to make me worthwhile, right buddy?”

“Pika, pikachupi pi Pikapi,” Pikachu said sagely, nodding its head, and Ash laughed again.

It was so completely impossible to imagine that they went back to the photos instead. The next one was of a slightly older Ash with a decidedly chubbier Pikachu, Brock, and a young girl with bright orange hair and striking eyes. The girl was flashing a peace sign, but Ash looked uncomfortable, his shoulders hunched as if the two humans were crowding him, and his hands were awkward on Pikachu’s sides.

The next picture, while still that young boy and chubby pikachu, looked much more like the Ash they knew. He didn’t seem aware of the camera, more focussed on the crowd of pokemon around him. Serena pointed again, amused. “I didn’t know you had these pokemon, Ash! Squirtle, Charmander, even Bulbasaur!”

He smiled vaguely. “Most of them moved on. Squirtle went back to its team; Charmander evolved in Charizard and went to training – but it came back last year; it’s on Professor Oak’s ranch with Bulbasaur, who kinda runs the place. Pidgeotto became Pidgeot, and it protects the forest outside Pallet. And Butterfree started a family pretty soon after that picture was taken, I think. It’s still technically mine, so no one else can catch it, but…” He trailed off, turning his head forward with an odd expression. It was sort of tight, and Pikachu quickly leaned forward to hide it.

“Pika pika…”

“Yeah… I know,” he mumbled.

Clemont hesitated. Since most of his pokemon career had been spent as a gym leader, he’d never had to give up a pokemon. Shinx was the closest, and it had never actually been his before they met again. But it was obvious Ash hadn’t taken his experiences easily. So rather than comment, Clemont just flipped to the next photo.

This time, Ash was with the orange-haired girl again, but looked a lot more comfortable, leaning against her shoulder and grinning at the camera. Another boy was with them, this one a little more heavy-set, with dark green hair held back by a band across his forehead. They were surrounded by pokemon, though only Pikachu and Bulbasaur looked familiar. There was a Charizard there, though – looking about ready to bite Ash’s head.

The new boy was replaced by Brock in the next photo, and this time the only pokemon were Pikachu (waving from atop Ash’s head) and an odd little thing still poking out of its shell, held tight in the girl’s arms.

The next one was another picture of Ash with a crowd of pokemon. It looked like everyone was supposed to be posing, but it had fallen apart when a grass-type pokemon decided to jump on Ash, with all the other pokemon in varying states of panic or amusement.

“Are all of these yours?” Clemont asked. “I had no idea you had so many pokemon!”

“Why didn’t you bring any with you to Kalos?” Serena asked curiously, and Pikachu pulled back enough for Ash to look at them again.

“Bulbasaur was the last pokemon I took with me to a new region—aside from Pikachu—and it asked not to travel anymore after Johto.  I bring them back for conferences sometimes, but I don’t usually think it’s fair to put my older teams up against new gyms,” he said. “I’m never gonna get stronger as a trainer if all I do is rely on the same pokemon. I used to do that with Charizard sometimes. It was pretty lazy.”

“Pi pikachu. Pika Pikapi?” Pikachu said, blinking at him, and Ash reached up to scratch behind its ear.

“You’re different. You’re my partner.”

“Pika!”

The next photo made Serena stiffen slightly, probably because there was a new girl draped over Ash’s shoulders, with (Clemont was almost ashamed to notice) a rather sizable chest for someone so young looking. Brock was there too, and a young boy around Bonnie’s age, but none of them were looking at the camera. Maybe they’d been intending to, but something had clearly made the older three laugh, and the young boy was turning to face them, confused.

After that was a photo of Ash and the boy from the first one, now both teenagers. Ash was facing the camera properly, talking to whoever was taking the picture, while Gary was smiling at Ash. It wasn’t the huge grin from when he’d been a child, but it was clearly fond all the same.

“You’re friends again?” Serena asked.

“Yeah, we mostly made up after I beat him in the Johto league. He gave up on battling, and I guess that was the last thing between us,” he explained. “I don’t see him much anymore, but he’s a good friend.”

Bulbasaur wasn’t in the next pokemon photo, and neither was Ash. It was just a group of them eating pokeblocks. Clemont tried to name them all, but he couldn’t recognise most of them. “Uh, Aipom, Grovyle, is that a Corphish? Um… Swellow, I think they’re called?”

“And Torkoal,” Ash added.

He skipped past the next photo because they’d already seen it, instead turning to the next pokemon photo. This one had Ash looking very much like his namesake, sitting with a fire-type that looked close to tears despite an attempt to smile at the camera. The other pokemon, none of which Clemont could recognise, were gathered around with expressions varying from forced smiles to sympathetic looks.

“What was going on here?” Serena asked, taking the wallet to show Ash what they were looking at. “Why are you burnt?”

“Chimchar was having a bad day,” Ash explained. “We were all training when it kind of lost control. I was explaining that I’d had a lot of pokemon that had trouble sometimes, and I still wanted it on my team – taking a photo kind of sealed the deal.”

After that was a picture of Ash with a tall, pale boy that Clemont vaguely recognised from a few gym leaders’ meetups, and a younger girl with very bushy purple hair. So bushy, in fact, that a pokemon had apparently taken up residence in it. Judging by the lifeboat behind them, they were on a ship of some kind, which might have explained why Ash looked so clean, without the ever-present road dirt that usually clung to his clothes.

The final photo was of a huge cast of pokemon, more than Clemont had ever seen in one picture. Despite the small photo, he could pick out most of the pokemon from earlier pictures, and realised this was Ash’s entire team. Plus a herd of tauros, for some reason.

It was… oddly humbling.

He quietly closed the wallet and handed it back. “We’ll have to take one of all of us someday.”

“Pika!” Pikachu cheered.

“Absolutely!” Ash agreed, slipping it into one of his side pockets. “Hey, maybe we can get Trevor to take one next time we see him! He’d have to have some way to print them out, right?”

“Yeah, but in the meantime –” Serena pulled out her pocket computer and tapped at it for a few seconds. “Selfie!”

“Selfie?” Ash repeated blankly. “What’s that?”

Even Clemont did a double-take at that. “You don’t know what a selfie is?”

“Uh… no? Is this a PokeVision thing?”

“It… no, come here,” Serena said, and smiled encouragingly at Clemont, who stiffened but leaned in close anyway. She lifted her computer up, but when Ash only came close enough to see, not close enough for the photo, Clemont grabbed his hand and pulled him in. He’d never taken one of these before, but he knew the idea. Ash, however, merely looked startled until he focussed on the computer and saw their faces reflected back. Pikachu regained its wobbling balance by bracing against Serena’s hat, and then gave a peace sign, which seemed to make things click for Ash. Serena waited just long enough for a smile to show on his lips before taking the snap.

It wasn’t perfect. Clemont looked vaguely terrified and Pikachu was making her hat slip over one eye while Ash still looked a little awkward. But it was them.

“Not bad!” Ash laughed. “But it doesn’t have Bonnie, so it’s not everyone!”

“We’ll wait for Trevor for that one,” Serena said, but her smile was slipping as she put the computer away again. “And we can always take more.”

Clemont looked at her, then wondered if she looked sad for the same reason he felt it.

He’d known, of course, that this wasn’t Ash’s first pokemon journey. And he attracted people to him so effortlessly that it would have been impossible for him to have never had travelling companions before. But Ash didn’t talk about the past. Today was the first time they’d heard about all these people. All his pokemon. All the adventures, the friends, the…

Ash only had one more badge to go, and then it would just be a few weeks until the next pokemon conference. And even if Serena didn’t get all three keys before the Master Class, Clemont didn’t think Ash would wait a whole year to see it through with her. Then, he was probably going to go to a new region. Or at least back to Kanto.

And they’d be just another photo in his wallet.

It hurt a lot worse than he expected.

**Author's Note:**

> The 48 are a collection of unfinished or pointless fics saved to my hard drive. I'm posting them here for people's interest, or in case they would like to adopt them, because nothing else is ever going to happen with them!
> 
> I like the Pokémon anime best when it actually remembers Ash had a storyline, once upon a time. XY, much like the Orange Islands and the start of Diamond and Pearl, has done a lot to remind us of that. I suspect it won't go anywhere, but it could! Naturally, most of my fic scraps of Pokémon are about that storyline Ash occasionally trudges down...


End file.
